Boardable--A Non-Profit's Dream Come True!
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Boardable has coordinated the restructuring of our Board and made it easier for our Board to meet and become more engaged during the pandemic. We now see the value in using a management platform to keep us organized and productive. I highly recommend to non-profit Boards to consider using Boardable if their goal is to expand the engagement and effectiveness of their Board of Directors.
Pros
- Organize and execute Board & Committee meetings through the "Meetings" which allows you to build your agenda, attach documents, create minutes, and send out a summary of the meeting once completed.
- Provide a very versatile Document Center where you can archive all types of documents for current and future use.
- Polls, Tasks, & Decision-making features. These tools allow for broadcasting to members at large or to committees important information to be acted upon. It also keeps a record of responses.
- Reports--this is an area we are just beginning to appreciate since it provides overviews of board member engagement and progress made within committees and the board at large.
- People Directory--an invaluable tool for orienting new board members to current members as well as allowing for board members to contact each other.
- Goal Setting: this is a tool we are just starting to use. It allows for the tracking of progress for board projects and/or fundraising.
Cons
- Spotlight bandwidth--our organization has a large board (26 members) and we encountered video issues at large meetings. In all fairness to Boardable, this was prior to the latest Spotlight upgrade as well as some of the issues had to do with users not following recommendations and/or not having a strong internet connection.
- You cannot deposit completed minutes directly into the document center. As it stands, once a meeting's minutes are published the minutes stay with the meeting then are stored on the "Past" meeting page. It would be nice to have the option to save the minutes directly to the document center for that particular board mtg or committee meeting.
- Sending notice of published meeting minutes to people who were not included in the original meeting. It would be ideal to allow all board members to receive published meeting notes to review who may not be associated with that group.
Most Important Features
- Agenda Building features--it organizes meetings and provides a quick turnaround for minute building and publishing.
- Spotlight--is pretty robust for smaller group meetings and for larger meetings Boardable provides a zoom integration. This is a nice choice if your board is used to using zoom or is concerned about bandwidth issues.
- Dashboard--allows a clear overview of your particular group interactions, upcoming meetings, and goals, and allows a box to post unique links or documents. We use it to post our strategic map, along with the agency's organizational chart, and other general lists.
- Discussions--this is a great feature for generating and/or continuing discussion on pertinent topics that need further action.
- Directory--I find this feature practical and handy for looking up contact info on board members and/or getting to know their background.
Return on Investment
- Boardable enabled our NP board to continue to meet during the pandemic and in the process helped us discover that we can accomplish more by using a digital platform to assimilate and store important documents, discussions, and tasks.
- I don't know the exact cost savings we gained but from a practical perspective using Boardable has saved tons of paper-generated reports, emails, and time-consuming staff activities. Boardable's fees are reasonable and provide affordable tiers to meet your agency's needs.
- I believe Boardable has taken our large board's engagement up a notch or two by providing the means by which board members can interact outside of in-person meetings.
Alternatives Considered
OnBoard Board Management Software, Govenda (formerly BoardBookit) and Azeus Convene
Other Software Used
Thinkific, Canva, MeetFox, MailerLite
